What are you listening to? Part III

What a gorgeous album cover.

 

https://itunes.apple.com/si/album/no-woman/1093890670?i=1093890751

 

Some Röyksopp at the moment.

 

The Stranglers: Waltzinblack, Strange Little Girl, Golden Brown, La Folie, No More Heroes, Don't Bring Harry, Cruel Garden, Peaches, Walk On By, (Get A) Grip (On Yourself), and Walk On By among others.

 

The Style Council: With Everything To Lose.

 

I Hear You Breathing In - Eleanor McEvoy - A Woman's Heart.

After The Ball - Frances Black - A Woman's Heart.

 

Cities 97 as I prepare for work.

 

Abba – Dancing Queen. Sort of.

 

The Wallflowers - Breach
Cool alternative. Underrated album imho.

 

The Killers.
Big thumbs up from me.
They had some great songs.

 

Agree. But this is probably my favourite.

 

Listening to Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it has been a few years.

 

Buckcherry - Lit Up
Classic rock/alternative. Good sound; very Aerosmith.

 

One of Queen's greatest hits, Save M—uh, some Kanye West, actually.



Thanks, Siri!

 

Listening to soundtracks of films scored by Alexandre Desplat this afternoon.... music I can appreciate but not get so distracted that I slack off some more work on UnFinishedObjects in the studio. Selections are from The Painted Veil, The Special Relationship, Syriana, The Queen, and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

PS. I didn't ask Siri about any of these, but thanks for the heads up.

 

To my mind, the soundtrack of Grand Hotel Budapest is also excellent, and I am also partial to the soundtrack of Fantastic Mr Fox.

 

An absolutely brilliant track; indeed, an absolutely brilliant album.

 

That's probably for the best; Siri is just broken enough to be interesting.

I'm waiting to find out that Siri actually achieved sapience in 2014-ish, and all of these misheard requests are actually just fledgling efforts to communicate. Considering the song it… responded to was called "Save Me," I don't think this bodes well for the poor AI.

 

I remember liking the Madison Square track from that album...

The first Lettuce I ever heard was the Double Header track, from their album Lost In Flight (The Fly Outtakes).

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That sold me in on their musicianship and I started exploring for more. Their whole story is a nice reminder that great things can spin off a bunch of strangers just happening to meet up someplace. Original band members met as teens in a summer class offered by Berklee Music Conservatory. All had slightly different backgrounds in music that had shaped their own performance characteristics. Met up again after a few years apart and have been giving a hat tip to all the great funk artists ever since, losing and adding only a couple players, and causing their band to land in the 'great funk' category itself.


On Siri and hunting for things:

I've had my moments with Siri. I still have hope but I let others be beta testers now.

 

Listening to Philip Glass, piano etudes. They were written to improve his own piano technique. Twenty works, written over about twenty years,,,, in performance they run to about two hours of a stunning evolution. Maki Namekawa the pianist. Apple Music.

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Perfect for gloomy introspective thoughts and days.

 

Lovely.
Philip Glass has been part of my life's soundtrack ever since I first heard his music while at university… ah so young and full of vim and vigour.

Recently, I was very fortunate to see both him and Laurie Anderson a couple years ago performing on a rainy night in Norwich (Norwich of all places!).
He played a few of the Etudes… and Laurie Anderson joined in with an improvisation with her electric violin…
After the concert I phoned my husband and I could barely speak I was sobbing so much… out of sheer joy, sheer sadness, a visceral thrill, having experienced them both live perhaps for the last time.

Anyway! Later this month we are off to go and hear Akhenaten performed by the ENO at the Coliseum.

Chameleon music for me… adapts to my moods. Lying on the sofa with a glass of wine and the cat snoring on my lap, staring out a window as the snow falls… great stuff.